


Threads

by Eledhwen



Category: Dalemark Quartet - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: Character Study, Family, Gap Filler, Gen, Immortality, Love, POV Female Character, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-19
Updated: 2011-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-27 13:49:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/296525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eledhwen/pseuds/Eledhwen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For saint_vee, who said that any new stories about Tanaqui would be great. I agreed, and decided to weave my own little tapestry of her life - or some of it. Happy Yuletide.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Threads

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saint_vee (corbae)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/corbae/gifts).



> Thanks to Tavia for a quick last-minute beta.

“They've found your spellcoats.”

I looked up from my loom. Duck had burst into the cottage, leaving the door open and letting a blast of wintry air through – autumn was certainly on its way.

“I know,” I said, as I got up to close the door, “they're in the weaving.”

Duck deflated, and collapsed into a chair. “I can never give you news these days, Tanaqui.”

I went to the fire and poured him a cup of tea from the kettle hanging over it. “That's my gift,” I reminded him. “But you can tell me something: who found them?”

“Hannart,” he said. “There's a fort being built, and they dug them up. They look good.” He grinned. “They're arguing over the patterns.”

“Well, they would. Nobody needs weaving these days to tell a story.” I poured tea for myself and settled down near the fire. “Tell me about the fort, though, and where you've been these last weeks.”

He was happy to talk, describing the rapidly-growing fort for me, and the exasperation of Hannart's Earl Keril as things did not go to his careful plans.

Duck left before nightfall, promising to come back soon. I lit candles and went back to my weaving, smoothing the spot where the patterns told me that my coats had been found. It had been a long time since I had thought about those coats, and the time spent weaving them – weaving in such strange places, by rivers and waterfalls, and out in the open with battles raging below. I have never had to weave in such conditions since.

I had not known, before the spellcoats, that any of us were anything special. Oh, we were strange, certainly – we stood out, with our fair hair, in our village, but special? No. And then came the war, and the floods. We found our family, and life changed.

It's odd, when your brother suddenly becomes a king, and starts having men rushing here and there at his every word. It's odd too, when your sister falls in love with someone who can come and go at the click of fingers or the music of a pipe.

But what is even odder is when you discover that you, and your big brother and your little brother, will just go on. When the war came I was too young to think about being grown up. Adults seemed so old, back then, and I did not understand boys at all. I did not understand why Robin and Tanamil were in love, though I liked Tanamil a lot.

It was not until much, much later that I realised Hern and Robin were getting older and Duck and I were not. We had known for some time that Gull was of the Undying; since Tanamil had saved his soul, I suppose. I had not thought that I would also be of the Undying. It is not something you think about, as you go about your life.

Gull was the first person I talked to about it. He is my big brother, who else would I have gone to? I had gone south to find him; he had travelled there to leave Hern's kingship open to him and had stayed. Despite the long journey I liked the south, for its warmth and its endless, flat countryside. When I found him, Gull was helping villagers repair a wall, destroyed by flooding – that was something we had all learned to do growing up in Shelling.

In the evening we found a quiet spot to sit, and I rested my head against his shoulder and breathed in the same old Gull-smell. “How are you?” I asked.

“Busy!” he laughed. Gull seemed to be much more cheerful than he had ever been before. “There's always something to do, you know, and there's always someone who's grateful for you doing it. I'm glad it was Hern who got to be king.”

“Hern looks like a king now,” I said, thinking of our brother and the worry-lines on his face. “He has grey hair coming. He looks a little like our father.”

“And Robin?” asked Gull, showing me that he knew where I was heading.

“There are lines, around her eyes, and on her hands. Gull, they're getting old, but I don't think we are.”

Gull shifted and put his arm around me. “I talked to Tanamil about this. He said that unions between the Undying and a normal person aren't common, so it's difficult to know, but sometimes some of the children are normal and some of them aren't. I think we're like that. You and me and Duck.”

“I wouldn't call Robin and Hern normal,” I objected.

“Well,” Gull said, “perhaps not quite. Do you think you mind, Tanaqui?”

“Not dying?” I asked. We had seen death, during the war, and I had not liked it; and there was still a space in my heart from my father's death. “I don't know. I hadn't thought about it.”

Gull hugged me. “Duck and I will be there, all through. We can help each other.”

I stayed with Gull for some weeks, that time in the south. When the village had finished its wall, we left and journeyed for a while. It was the longest Gull and I had ever spent together, and we talked a lot, about the war, about our voyage down the River and the battle with Kankredin. I had not known that Gull could be so lighthearted. People liked to see him about – they called him their hero, and they called me Cennoreth, because I was from the north and also because Gull and I spoke often about the River.

At length, I went back to Kernsburgh, and found it had grown in my absence to a truly great city. My weaving from that time is full of colour and pattern, new shades springing up in each line of the cloth. I remember it was a joyful time in many ways. Robin had a baby, a girl with our fair, wispy hair, who would lie and laugh as Duck and Tanamil played their pipes for her. The city became beautiful; Hern built roads that brought people to it.

And I met Osfamon. He was tall, and dark, and unlike any man I had yet spent any time looking at. I was weaving when we met, on a bright sunny day. My loom had been moved outside and I was weaving slowly by the river, concentrating with only half my mind and with the other half watching the water and the patterns made by the sunlight and the leaves.

Osfamon, his shoes and the hem of his rugcoat stained with mud, came walking along the riverbank with a bag over his shoulder, humming a tune under his breath and seeming as though he had no cares in the world. I wove, and watched him walk; he glanced at me as he went by, slowing to look at what I was doing, and grinned a wonderful grin at me.

Later, I went over my work from the day, and found the pattern that usually meant 'love' running right across the width of the cloth. I looked at it for a while, and went to track down Osfamon.

We married. Not straight away – he was not sure he wanted to get married – but I'd woven it, so I always knew we would. I think we were happy. It is so long ago now, and perhaps I am forgetting the arguments married couples have, the times when he got bored with my weaving, the times when I wished he would be home on time from his music-making. For Osfamon, though he spent his days tilling the fields, was a musician at heart. He struck up a strong accord with Duck, and they would have made music together all hours of the day if they had been able to do so. Osfamon knew something of instruments, and it was he who first showed Duck how to smooth wood to a sheen, to steam and curve the fat belly of a cwidder, and finally to string it so that it sang true.

We had a little house, near Hern's stone castle, and he worked and I wove and watched over Manaliabrid playing with my wool. Manaliabrid constantly astonished me, that we had made such a thing. She was pretty as a baby and became more beautiful as she grew, but even my weaving did not tell me of the twists and turns her life would take.

I lost my Osfamon, eventually. I remember I even stopped weaving, for a time, for I could not throw the shuttle without crying all over the wool. Manaliabrid was in turn soothing and frustrated with me, and with Duck, for Duck was as upset as I was. He retreated, stopped playing music, and vanished from society.

“You're being ridiculous, mother,” Manalibrid chided me, after a month of crying. “I miss father too, of course I do, but you must have known that you'd lose him at some point.”

“But it's so unfair!” I wailed, more like a child than a mother with an adult daughter. “You'll understand one day.”

Oh, how these predictions come back to haunt you later! I remembered that, when Manaliabrid's Adon was killed. Her grief was worse than mine, tenfold worse, and it was for her that Duck brought him back to life. I could not console her or stop him, even though my weaving was a snarl of angry red – a wrong red, a red that told me no good would come of it. I was right. Even though their joy at being reunited was great and, for a while, the Adon ruled from Kernsburgh, I always had the sense it would not end well. When he died for a second time Manaliabrid, I think, lost her mind. She vanished, taking her children with her. I still do not know where she went, and in vain I have looked at my weaving for an answer. She was my only child, and I miss her.

It was on the Adon's death I left Kernsburgh. There was nothing left for me there. Gull was in the south and Tanamil and Duck were wandering the north. I found my little croft in Dropthwaite, had the loom moved there, and settled down.

Possibly I should have been lonely, but I found I liked the peace and quiet. Travellers passed through on their way to or from Kernsburgh; from them I learned that the kingdom was in strife, with no true king to take Hern's crown. Somehow the war passed me by. I thought I was lucky, but when Tanamil stopped by he looked at me critically, and at the croft.

“I think you're a witch, Tanaqui,” he said. “Do you know I don't think anyone could find this place unless you wanted them to?”

“I didn't do it on purpose!” I exclaimed.

Tanamil shook his head. “No. But there you have it.” He peered at my weaving. “Remarkable,” he said, and left, striding away on long legs.

The years passed in the same quiet way. You stop thinking about them after a while, I found. Around me the world changed. The north and the south were divided. People stopped believing in the Undying, though that did not stop us existing. Duck, I fear, played on it more than most. He never did settle down, but he left a trail of heartbroken women around the country, seduced by his music and his tales. He picked up names and dropped them again. His skill has always been to blend in, to listen and to witness, while mine is to record.

Now my first piece of what some would call magic and what I would call craft has been found again. At Hannart, I know, Earl Keril and his people will be cleaning the spellcoats, looking at the patterns, trying to read them. They will, eventually, succeed, but I do not think they will really understand the story told in the coats. How could they? I am still not sure I understand it, and after all, I wove it. I lived it. And, I suppose, I will go on weaving it and living it until the coats have rotted into nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> Details taken from the epilogue to "The Spellcoats" and the appendix to "The Crown of Dalemark", including the etymology of 'Cennoreth'. I think it's unambiguous from chapter XVII of "The Crown ..." that Tanaqui and Cennoreth are one and the same, although the appendix is more ambiguous on the subject.
> 
> It seems clear that Manaliabrid was of the Undying, although not what happened to her after the Adon died for good. I chose that she would have disappeared and imagine her wandering somewhere in Dalemark. Maybe she took refuge in the Holy Islands.
> 
> I used the entry for 'Osfameron' in the appendix as a source for the name of Tanaqui's love. 'Osfameron', we are told, means 'Osfamon the Younger' and I thought that positing a close friendship between Osfamon and Duck would be a reason for Duck taking the name Osfameron.


End file.
